May 5, 2016

“We’re almost lucky as modern polyamorous people [because] the constructs haven’t been developed yet.”

Her Canberra

A local quarterly women's magazine in Australia, in print and online, features this:

Big Love: Polyamory in Canberra

By Beatrice Smith

Of all the diverse identities within the queer community, polyamory (or ‘poly’) has perhaps benefited least from popular culture, leaving the general understanding of polyamory threadbare and largely negative.

...“One of the things I’ve realised is that I even do friendship differently; I think a lot of poly people probably do,” says Megan Munro, an artist and social justice advocate. Like Ayesha, Megan refuses to see poly as a competition between partners. “I don’t have a ‘best friend’ and I don’t really have ‘a’ group of friends — I just have friends, so I think I have the same approach to friends as I do to my intimate relationships — they just ‘are’.”

...The idea of loving someone — multiple someones — as individuals is a wonderfully comforting idea, but for most people it’s easier in theory than in practice.

The more I talk to people about polyamory, the more I realise it’s just as much about the effort you put in as it is about the love.

...“We’re almost lucky as modern polyamorous people [because] the constructs haven’t been developed yet,” explains Siren. “We don’t have a poly nuclear family so it gives you that freedom to make your own rules, which I find really liberating.”

...If you haven’t heard of compersion before (neither had I), feeling compersion means to feel happy in your partner’s romantic happiness, whether that be with you or someone else.

It reminds me of one of those words like Boketto (Japanese for staring vacantly into the distance) or Torschlusspanik (German for a feeling of panic that your chances in life are diminishing as you age) that are described in other languages but we don’t have an English word for. Turns out we do. Or perhaps it’s simply that it hasn’t been co-opted for use in monogamous couples.

I tell Ayesha this and she’s thoughtful.

“I think that’s a shame because it’s such a brilliant idea,” says Ayesha.

...What comes up again and again is the way all three talk about other people’s poly relationships. “It’s not the way I do [poly] but some people might,” they all say at different points in the conversation, eager to distance themselves from judgement. It’s clear that polyamory probably benefits somewhat from its relatively fluid cultural definition — the rules aren’t written in stone so people make their own....